Shot to Remember
by LittleLongHairedOutlaw
Summary: The guards shot during 'Don Juan Triumphant', and Christine is haunted by the memory of it.


**A/N: Warnings for psychological trauma, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), period-typical language regarding mental illness, murder.**

* * *

A scream pierces the air. Her eyes snap open, cold sweat beading her forehead, heart pounding. The room whirls around her, spinning and spinning, and she squeezes her eyes shut again, gasping, fingers clenching the linen sheets tight. She can't breathe, _can't breathe_ , a noose around her throat and she scrabbles at it, can't find it, but surely it is there, choking her, squeezing so tight her lungs burn from the effort, black spots dancing before her eyes- A bolt of pain lances through her chest, searing hot but the noose loosens , and she gasps a full breath. The throbbing in her heart eases, ebbs away bit by bit as she sinks deeper into the bed, tremor after tremor racing through her, and at last, at last she is aware of her husband, snoring beside her even as she whimpers. She swallows the nausea in her stomach and curls up as tight as she can.

A long time she lies there, listening to each soft breath of her husband, leaning into him. She matches herself to him, the back of his hand smooth beneath her fingertips. He is warm, and safe. Safe. She just needs to remember that, to let it sink so deeply into her that she can never forget it. He is safe, here with her. Peaceful, and safe.

Not so safe. The hairs on the back of her neck prickle, skin crawling as if-as if somebody- as if _he_ is watching from behind, and her heart beats a higher register, throbbing in her throat.

 _There is nobody there, but I just have to check. I have to make certain. I just have to check. Just to be safe. If I need to I'll wake him but I have to check._ She takes a breath, and nods, and rolls onto her back.

The room is still, still and empty and silent but for her own breathing, and his. Definitely empty. Her eyes scan each shadow, blue-tinged in the glow of the moonlight, trace the floor, as much of it as she can see, brush over her husband's sleeping form, and it is all empty. A movement flickers at the corner of her vision and she turns her head again. It is the curtains, only the curtains fluttering gently in the breeze from the window-the window.

She closed the window before they retired for the night.

Her eyes linger on it, on the sliver of sharp moonlight lancing through the gap to fall in across the floor. The soft rustling of the curtains disturbs it, softens its edges. She _did_ close the window, didn't she? She makes certain to every night. It is a ritual, to keep the cold from getting in.

Maybe she didn't close it. Maybe she forgot. It has been, after all, a long day, or it was.

She should check it. Just to be certain. The room will be freezing in the morning if it is open.

She nods, again, and slowly, ever so slowly so as not to disturb her husband, eases herself out from under the bedsheets. The carpet is cool beneath her feet but not cold, and there is no time to think on it, to wonder at it, as she stands on half-trembling legs and crosses to the window, her heart pounding so hard now she can feel it echoing in her brain, a thunderous drumming that she cannot escape, whispering to her that _you know you closed it, you definitely closed it_. She swallows hard, forces the whispers out and bracing herself, fingers twitching, pulls the curtain back.

The window is closed, the latches shut tight. A wave of nausea washes over her, unsteadying, and the curtain slips from her fingers. She clenches her fist tight, flexes her fingers, daring the curtain to move, to stir in any way. It was definitely moving when she woke, definitely moving and the window, now, definitely closed though she did not hear anyone close it and so she must have done so, earlier. There is no doubt of that. Surely, if she waits long enough, the curtain will twitch again and she will-

The curtain hangs as still as the dead, and she waits until her feet are past numbness, the chill buried deep in her bones, to watch it.

* * *

That is not the only such night. There are many of them, dotted through time, nights when she awakes to rustling curtains and closed windows and empty shadows though there is someone watching her, watching them. And she tells herself, each time, that there is no need to panic, there is nothing there, but she is reminded of dressing room mirrors that were secret doors, of a man who was master of hidden passageways, and she cannot rest, cannot _sleep_ without checking. She needs to make certain that is all is well. It is her duty to do so.

And when she wakes, after resigning her vigil and returning to bed, her husband smiles at her and kisses her cheek and says he hopes she had a pleasant night. And she does not tell him, cannot tell him that they are not alone, only kisses him back and says that she wishes for him to stay in bed with her, for a while, to doze a little longer. And he acquiesces to her desires, and wraps his arms tight around her, and with the beating of _his_ heart beneath her ear she can rest.

But they are never alone, not truly. And there is never truly peace.

* * *

The whisper is soft in her ear, a silken caress that draws her attention away from her knitting. _Lead me, save me from my solitude_. Cool fingertips brush her cheek and she inhales sharply, blood rushing through her ears, fingers gripping the needles so tight her knuckles are white, but she must not scream, she will not scream, that would upset him, disrupt the order of the opera. She must listen, let him whisper. _Say you want me with you here, beside you._ She can't move, body frozen, that voice weaving itself deeper in her soul, slipping over her skin and she can't move, can't get away, must listen to it, the voice, the song, the rhyme of it, knots twisting in her gut. _Anywhere you go let me go too. Christine-_

She whips around in her chair to look behind her, and there is nobody standing there, no fingers resting against her cheek, only her own hair, slipped from its chignon. There is only her, alone but for her husband asleep over his newspaper, the parlour soft in the glow of the fire, silent but for the pounding of her heart.

 _He_ is no where to be seen. It should be a relief, but her skin crawls, and she sets her knitting down, rests her head in her hands, the twisting in her gut almost more than she can bear.

* * *

Every tall finger draped in black is _him_. Every rustle of leaves is _him_. Every door creaking is _him_. Every pair of cats eyes, every shiver down her spine, every moment when the world feels as if it's shifted – they are all _him_. _He_ is everywhere and she cannot escape him. And she is not certain that she should.

It is as well that her husband does not know. It would upset him so, would torment him to know that they have not truly escaped, that _he_ still lingers amongst them. He felt that what he did was right, that the order he gave needed to be given in order to protect them, protect _her_ , and she cannot judge him for that even when the bile of guilt rises inside of her and she wishes that he never had done it. And if all that she can do is let him keep that easeful lie that what he did was right, then that is what she must do. She cannot bear to hurt him now, however many nights it costs her.

* * *

The blood sprayed hot across her face, and in the middle of the screams and the rush she wondered how badly it had ruined her make-up. _The show cannot go on if the actress looks like a murder victim_. The thought was so foreign, so incongruous that she felt a bubble of laughter well up inside of her, that laughter-hysterical that choked itself into a sob when it reached her throat, and she feels it even now, threatening to erupt. How she must have looked, so immaculate in her pink and black dress, her hair in careful tresses, and a spray of blood burning against her pale cheek. No artist could ever hope to recreate it.

She forces the threatening hysterics down, and swallows, brushes her hand over the creases of her dress. Her husband smiles at her across the table, blue eyes crinkling softly, peacefully oblivious, and she musters a smile back for him, lets the images of that night die away. If she can just focus on now, focus on him, then maybe, maybe…

* * *

She should never have gone along with what they told her. She should have run when she had the chance to. If she had run fast enough and pulled her hus- _Raoul,_ and pulled Raoul with her and both of them worn different names it might never have happened. It _would_ never have happened. They would be safe, now, in Sweden or America or who knows where and there would be no ghost, no _phantom_ flickering constantly at the edges of her vision. They would be _safe._

These are the lies she tells herself, the ones she whispers in the darkness, Raoul's breath warm against her neck. And if she says them softly enough, clings to them hard enough, she can almost believe that they are true.

(She should have insisted that they shoot to wound, not to kill, should have insisted that they not shoot at all, only found a way to capture him. Anything, to keep him breathing.)

* * *

It comes to her in fragments, little cracked shards of mirror. Him, wrapped in his black cloak, his ring cold as he slips it onto her finger. His eyes, boring into her, pleading with her for to answer him and the words drying in her throat. The cracks of the pistol shots renting the air. His eyes widening as he sways, looking down at himself and his gaze drawing hers so that she can see the blood trickling from his chest, darkly red against the black. His hands slipping from hers and her moving to catch him but being too slow, getting dragged down with him to the stage. Tearing through his cloak to find the holes, find the bleeding but there was so many of them and there was so much, the blood hot beneath her hands. Gurgling whimpers in his throat. His fingers twitching helpless beside him. His eyes burning through her, begging her to hold on to him. Hands scrabbling at her shoulders, trying to pull her back and her only thoughts _stop the bleeding you have to stop the bleeding there's too much you need to stop it you need to help him he needs you to stop it you have to-_ His eyes rolling in his head even as his lips try to form her name, shattering it into blood-stained syllables. Her own lips moving in answer to him, trying to shush him, to ease the pain, the Latin of hurried prayers even as she leans down on his wounds with all her weight and his eyelids flicker, a stream of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, stark against the white of his face. A heaving gasp, and silence, and another heaving gasp, the muscles of his chest straining beneath her, face slack, eyes narrow, shining slits beneath the lids, staring into nothing as she leans down, her voice hoarse, begging him, pleading with him to hold on, keep breathing, even as he sighs and does not gasp again. Raoul's voice dim in her ear _he's gone he's gone it's over he's gone._ Falling, falling…

Her eyes snap open, tears drying cold on her cheeks, Raoul's arm warm around her waist, his breath soft against her throat. She feels the blood, still sticky on her fingers, oddly disconnected from her as she flexes them, draws them trembling into her view. Pristine white and delicate, not dripping with blood though they were once, long ago.

(Not so very long. Two years, and the blood lingered in the cracks of her nails for weeks through questions and denials and betrayals and arrangements.)

So much blood. How could a human body hold all that blood? And he just lay there, broken beneath her and still, as if somebody had _arranged_ him on the stage, as if it were all part of the act, of the opera. So still, his mangled cheek still warm as she grazed it with her fingertips, his forehead smooth beneath her lips. It was all that she could do as they tried to pull her away. Touch him, and kiss him, and not feel anything but their hands, and him, and buzzing numbness in her veins.

* * *

Sometimes, she thinks, she might tell Raoul. Tell him that she cannot sleep for the memories, cannot breathe for the phantom-blood that sprays her. Tell him that they are haunted by a ghost in every shadow, and that they need to run, now, get as far away as they can from this city, this country that _he_ has woven himself into the very fabric of. Tell him that she feels _him_ , still, sometimes, his fingertips on the back of her hand, the way he gripped her hands so tight before the-before. Tell him that she hears _him_ , always, his voice echoing through her bones.

How could she tell him that? Any of that? He would think her mad. It would destroy him, destroy his love for her, and he would see no option but to have her put away, in one of those houses for mad people, for her own safety he would say, because he cannot help her on his own. That is what they do to mad people, isn't it? Lock them far away?

She is not mad. She is merely haunted. She needs a priest, not a doctor, but she could never begin to explain herself to a priest, and he might think her mad too. No. It is best to say nothing, to pretend that all is well, and smile for her husband and tell him she loves him.

She does love him, truly. With every fibre of her heart she loves him.

Besides, a ghost would find her, find them, wherever they were. There is no use in running.


End file.
